room. There would also be a great divan, upholstered in royal blue velvet, and a royal blue velours carpet on the floor. This maple! Mahogany was Alice's favourite wood. Some of these opinions she had uttered aloud at one time or another, safely enough, she thought, because this cottage represented her sister's taste. If Harold had been responsible . . . !
Harold was both pleased and alarmed by these discourses on the subject of interior decoration. Alice seemed so practical and matter of fact. He had not sensed these qualities in her before marriage. He was coming to believe, indeed—he was thinking in terms of fact and not of deprecation—, that he had known nothing whatever about his wife before marriage. He had hardly even conversed with her. But, fundamentally, he felt, she was his kind, and this interest in house furnishing, this passion for children, however incautiously and belatedly divulged, were part of what he wanted. They were fractions of a great normal entity to which he aspired. Yet, sometimes, with the cold breeze from the sea, a parallel psychic frigid wind had blown across his soul, an unknown terror had assailed him. His reason could not tell him what it meant but, instinctively, he understood, dimly enough at first, perhaps, that it portended disillusion. He was also amazed, sometimes, to find himself thinking—so little was he analytical—that a great part of Alice's charm for him, in this newly
